curious about LW’s thoughts about the degree to which passivity absolves you from responsibility
I don’t think passivity as such has much to do with it. I think responsibility is diluted when the thing you did-or-didn’t-do had its effect only by many thousands of other people likewise doing-or-not-doing it. If A threatens to assassinate the President and B1...B1000 all fail to report him to the FBI despite seeing the threat, and then he does it—well, then B1 through B1000 all bear some responsibility, but I suggest at most about 0.1% as much as A does. I’m inclined to think rather less than 0.1% as much.
(But of course how much responsibility should be assigned to any given person for any given thing is a complicated question in complicated cases, and surely there’s no One True Right Answer.)
I’m not thinking of things like reporting a possible assassin to the FBI, I’m thinking of things like living in a country with a, let’s say, morally reprehensible leadership. Say, Stalin’s Russia or Hitler’s Germany. And you’re a regular person, you just go to your job every day, you don’t shoot anyone or personally interrogate enemies of the state. Of course, you do go to the party meetings, but then everyone does. To what degree are you complicit in the doings of your state?
I do not imply that there is One True Right Answer.
I don’t think passivity as such has much to do with it. I think responsibility is diluted when the thing you did-or-didn’t-do had its effect only by many thousands of other people likewise doing-or-not-doing it. If A threatens to assassinate the President and B1...B1000 all fail to report him to the FBI despite seeing the threat, and then he does it—well, then B1 through B1000 all bear some responsibility, but I suggest at most about 0.1% as much as A does. I’m inclined to think rather less than 0.1% as much.
(But of course how much responsibility should be assigned to any given person for any given thing is a complicated question in complicated cases, and surely there’s no One True Right Answer.)
I’m not thinking of things like reporting a possible assassin to the FBI, I’m thinking of things like living in a country with a, let’s say, morally reprehensible leadership. Say, Stalin’s Russia or Hitler’s Germany. And you’re a regular person, you just go to your job every day, you don’t shoot anyone or personally interrogate enemies of the state. Of course, you do go to the party meetings, but then everyone does. To what degree are you complicit in the doings of your state?
I do not imply that there is One True Right Answer.